Make WordPress Dance to your Tune

WordPress is commonly used as a blogging platform but if you dig deeper, you will find that there are many different ways in which this CMS (Content Management System) can be used. You might need to modify your theme differently to reach your target but it is entirely possible. You can also take the help of some already available plugins that will help you do the task.

Given below are some ideas for the enthusiasts and modders. I am also thinking of developing some free themes which will help you to use WordPress in the following ways :-

Giving your Blog a Website look

If you change the front page of your blog to a static one, you can configure WordPress to easily behave like a normal site instead of a blog. In WordPress 2.5.1, there is an option under settings -> Reading of your wp-admin section where you can set the front page of your blog to a static page. After doing this, you can just design your static page to look like a standard website.

Here are some additional tutorials to accomplish this :-

Creating a Static Front Page
Creative a Static Front Page (with many options)

Photo Gallery Look

People usually have a hard time choosing a suitable image gallery for their websites because there are so many choices available on the Internet. But why look elsewhere when you can convert your WordPress installation into a photo gallery with a ready made administration section. A lot of themes and plugins are already available to turn your blog to a photo gallery. Here are some resources for you :-

Photo Gallery Plugins

Yet Another Photo Blog
PhotoQ WordPress Photo Blog plugin
PhotoXhibit plugin
WP Photo Album

Photo Blog Themes

Photo Blog Theme from Blog Oh! Blog
Nishita Photo Blog theme
Grain Photo Theme

Shopping (E-commerce) Website

This aspect of WordPress might be new to you even if you have been a WordPress user for a long time now. WordPress can be actually used to run an E-commerce website using some plugins and themes. For example, Instinct.co.nz offers an excellent plugin called WP e-commerce that lets you turn WordPress into an easy to use fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.

Here are some more plugins to set up a shopping cart system on your WordPress blog:-

YAK PayPal Shopping Cart plugin
eShop for WordPress
Easy PayPal WordPress plugin

Tutorials Website

How many times have you wanted to start a tutorials site but could not find a suitable script/theme that will allow you to do so. Surprisingly, WordPress lets you do just that and more. A while back, I had released a Tutorials theme on Blog Oh! Blog, which can be used to start a tutorials website right away. You can combine this theme with some sort of rating system to help users rate the tutorials on your website.

Rating plugins:-

DS-Rating Plugin
Star Rating Plugin
WP-Post Ratings Plugin

Hot or Not Website

These websites are a rage nowadays where you rate images (of people, products, websites etc.) as “Hot” or “Not Hot”. Kind of time wasters but hey, most people on the Internet come to waste their time. An idea would be to use any theme and post images alongside using a plugin which allows you to mark the pictures as Hot or Not. Blogorola WordPress Plugin can be used to rate the images easily. I am also planning to release a free WordPress theme for such kind of websites. So, you can look forward to it.

Portfolio Website

Any web designer or a freelancer can use WordPress to create a quick portfolio website and showcase his skills. Usually you can just use any WordPress theme to create your portfolio but a little bit of special tweaking can really work wonders.

Here are two parts of a tutorial which will teach you how to use WordPress to run a portfolio site :-

How to use WordPress for a Portfolio Site – Part 1
How to use WordPress for a Portfolio Site – Part 2

And, finally, here are a lot of other creative ways to use WordPress to your liking.

So, you see how WordPress is not limited to a blogging software. With WordPress, you can just do anything…